North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["tanis cuff" <tanistanis@hotmail.com>]

Thanks, Bernie.  That was actually my next Q-- on whether to "store scions 
in a block of ice"-- the scion in a bag and then the bag frozen in some 
water ?  Or the scion directly frozen into the water, and then the ice 
packaged up somehow?  Your description makes sense, and sounds simpler to 
me.

tc, s.WI, not so cold but winter enough


----Original Message Follows----
From: Bernie Nikolai >
To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [NAFEX] Scion storage in freezer works!
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 20:11:37 -0800

Under certain conditions, of course.  Today it hit -42F as a low at the
Edmonton International Airport, and with windchill, the equivalent of -50C
or close to -60F!  This is too cold to collect apple scions :)

But this works:  A freezer is about 0 degrees F or about -17C in terms of
temperature.  On a day with the same outside temperature in February or
March (this is Alberta), I have just collected some apple scions, stuffed
the plastic bag I will store them in with snow, and then sealed the bag and
put it in the freezer immediately.  To the cut scion, it was 0F 3 minutes
ago, and now it is still 0F in the freezer, except there is snow packed
around it.  Then just unthaw at room temperature and graft when you want to.
I don't do this anymore, as I see no advantage to doing this over cuting the
scions in late March or early April and storing them in the fridge. But it
does work well for apple scions if you want to do it this way.
Bernie Nikolai
Edmonton, Alberta
zone 3/2

_________________________________________________________________
There are now three new levels of MSN Hotmail Extra Storage!  Learn more. 
http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-us&page=hotmail/es2&ST=1